Back in 2003 when Madame Tutli-Putli was first being discussed as a
concept for an animated short film, one of the most important creative
issues was how to bring human emotion and expressiveness to
stop-motion puppets. Jason and the Clyde Henry's (Chris and Maciek)
discussed many different approaches. In the end, the solution arose
when Jason tested the tracking and re-timing of live action human eyes
onto a stop-motion scene. This test led to the creation of a
remarkable production process whereby live action human eyes were
added to almost 20 minutes of stop-motion animation in a manner that
was perfectly seamless and completely unobtrusive.

Jason developed a system of separating and analyzing the previously
shot stop-motion puppet moves, choreographing, rehearsing and shooting
a human actor's corresponding "eye performance" to match each puppet
move, at the same time recreating as closely as possible all light and
shadow passes original to the stop-motion. Once the human eyes were
shot, each eye was individually positioned, scaled, re-timed and
digitally composited onto the puppet scenes. As different actors were
cast for almost all the characters, the requirement was not only to
integrate the human eyes onto each puppet, but on a frame by frame
basis, match the subtle movement of the puppets, the camera, and the
train – all the while retaining the flow of the acting. "This
required every trick in the book and more!" exclaims Mr. Walker. The
creation of the film and this extraordinarily painstaking process took
4 years from concept to completion.

Madame Tutli-Putli images courtesy of The National Film Board of CanadaThis website is Copyright 2007 Jason Walker. All rights reserved.